


Circle Game

by RosemarysBabysitter (TashaElizabeth)



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-26
Updated: 2014-08-26
Packaged: 2018-02-14 20:23:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2201874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TashaElizabeth/pseuds/RosemarysBabysitter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>fill for a tumblr anon who asked for 'chilton having to take care of his neice/nephew/whatever'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Circle Game

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [无题](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2348831) by [micorom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/micorom/pseuds/micorom)



Elena sat on top of a picnic table and before her was spread a sample of each flower, wild or cultivated that grew within the little park. Behind her, running children screamed in delight as they assaulted slides, towers, bridges and monkey bars. She hunkered over her specimens, the middle finger of her right hand twitching at the air as though figuring accounts. She arranged and then rearranged the flowers. First by stem length, then by variations in color and finally by petal size. As Frederick approached she didn’t look at him but rather tilted her head away from him to acknowledge his presence. 

“Where’s your mama?” he asked.

She tilted her head, still away from him but to her left. At the corner of the park, past the last swing set and the border of woodchips, a short pretty woman in a tank top and jeans made impassioned pleas to the cellular phone at her ear. It was his sister.

Something bumped against Frederick’s fingers. He looked down. Elena slid a white peony toward him, huge and lush, dripping all over with heavy wet petals. He picked up the blossom and held it in the palm of his hand. He looked at his sister, now standing still, one hand over her eyes as she looked toward them. He raised his hand in greeting. She continued to speak on the cell phone.

“That’s a very pretty flower, Elena,” Frederick said absently. “Is it a rose?”

Elena smiled to herself in a bemused way and shook her head vigorous. The movement spurred a slight rocking movement. She touched the peony toward him again.

“I know, it’s a sunflower.”

Elena shook her head again, tapping the table several times in exclamation.

“Oh, then it must be a peony.” Elena looked up at him and beamed, nodding her head and making happy flapping gestures with the palms of her hands. She touched the peony toward him again and then, climbing awkwardly down from the picnic table, headed over to her mother. 

Frederick followed.

Laura ended the call with frustrated groan and, as Elena reached up for the phone and tried to take it from her, raised the back of her hand to her forehead in disgust. “There was a mixup with my electric bill and I have to go to the bank. Oh god, Elena hates the bank.”

“Do you need money?”

Laura rolled her eyes, but sedately. “I just have to move some stuff around and it's going to take at least forty minutes and just…” Elena continued to reach for the cell phone. Laura caught her wrist and brought her hand away absently. She took a deep breath and looked at Frederick miserably over her daughter put upon sighs. “I just didn’t plan on doing this when I got ready this morning,” Laura said.

Frederick took his cell phone from his pocket and handed to Elena. The child sat down on the wooden border which separated playground from parking lot and began to familiarize herself with its apps. The adults looked from her to each other.

Frederick shrugged. “You can leave her with me.”

“What?”

“I’m perfectly capable of watching Elena for forty minutes.”

Laura squinted at him. Frederick could picture her remembering every stupid thing he’d ever done from first grade on. She sighed.

“Go now,” Frederick said. “Before I change my mind.”

Laura looked to her daughter, then to the park, then to Frederick. He was, having just come from work, impossibly ill dressed for a bustling, late summer romp through a children’s playground. 

“Just stay here,” Laura said, backing away from the two. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Thirty minutes top.”

“Take your time.”

“Twenty minutes!” Laura called, heading towards her car. “Listen to Uncle Frederick, sweetie.”

Elena didn’t look up. Frederick craned his head to see the screen of his phone. She was playing a video poker simulator and appeared to be two hundred dollars down. He took the phone from her and tucked it away in his suit jacket.

“Let’s find something else to do.”

On the other side of the park, down a trail of looming, ill maintained trees and situated near an overpriced ice cream stand was a huge, partially restored carousel. Elena went running up to it and put her fingers through the wire fence which surrounded it. The music played prettily in the air. 

In a small booth, they found a bored looking college aged ticket seller, smacking her pink gum against her teeth and reading a magazine. Frederick bought five tickets and shooed Elena through the entrance. Elena climbed on the platform and stood, enraptured beside a horse. The other riders, a collection of teenagers cackling and commenting with ironic distain, selected their horses and loudly named them before climbing on.

Frederick stood inside the fence, watching, as the ride began. Elena was surprised by the rotating platform, but she braced against it, giggling and making happy gestures. She put her hands on the one in front of her and let it push against her tensed muscles. She turned and did the same to the horse behind her, then launched herself a few stumbling steps forward and began again on the pair ahead of her. He couldn’t imagine Elena looking happier if the whole ride had been made out of flowers. 

The music came to a climax and the ride ground to a stop. One of the teenagers came leaping down from the carousel and banged on the back door of the little ticket booth.

Elena came over to him, her eyes wide.

“Did you have fun?” Frederick asked.

“Some stupid fucking kid was touching me the whole time,” the teenager began to the woman in the ticket booth. The ticket seller rolled her eyes in exasperation and popped her gum again. “Feeling up my legs,” the teenager went on. “I need another ride. Without that kid, get me?”

The ticket seller caught eyes with Frederick and beckoned him closer. “Your daughter will have to stay on the horse is she’s going to ride again.”

“Care to tell me why?”

The ticket seller shrugged. “She just has to, okay? Comfort of the other riders. I can give you a refund if you want.”

Elena was walking back to the ride. 

“I’ll put her on the horse.”

He put her on the horse. 

She sat back straight in the saddle, her arms wrapped around the pole and her feet and fingers twitching. She looked down at Frederick in trepidation. Frederick smiled. Elena didn’t smile back.

The ride lurched away and the horse lifted up into the air, kicked forward, and began its slow descent. As Elena rounded the corner, Frederick saw that her eyes were shut tight. In a sudden burst of atypical empathy, he thought he understood the situation.

It would not be the sound that would bother her. Elena quite enjoyed loud sounds. Rather, the up and down movement of the carousel horse would strobe the sound in her ears and confuse its location. There would be the rude comments and harsh laughter of the teenagers on either side of her to contend with as well. There would be a moment of free fall when the horse suddenly switched direction combined with the outward force of the circular motion. Elena would clutch harder to the pole afraid of falling. Doing so would prevent her from moving her hands to communicate.

Over the sound of the music, Frederick could hear Elena cry out. When she rounded the corner again, there were tears flooding down her face and she was taking in large, heavy gasps of air. She was shifting back and forth on the saddle, ramming her shoulder against the pole again and again. She left go of the horse entirely and began to topple over.

Frederick tore up onto the platform and dragged Elena off the horse. She kicked once, but when he got his arms around her and held her firmly against his chest she stilled under the heavy touch. There was laughter behind him. He marched out of the ride, past the little ticket booth. The ticket seller did not look up long enough to offer him another refund. 

Elena sobbed into the front of his shirt and twisted in his grip. He brought her over to a park bench and sat down, hunching his shoulder over her body. “Shh,” he said. He wiped the tears off her face with his hands and then held her head against his chest. “We’re okay. We’re okay. We’re taking a deep breath now.”

She twined her fingers into his jacket. She took the deep breath. The birds in the trees above them swooped back and forth catching mosquitoes. Her attention drifted to them and her muscles relaxed. Frederick smoothed down her hair and she shrugged him off.

Frederick looked toward the carousel. The teenagers were filing out to buy more tickets. One of them jauntily lit a cigarette.

“Do you want to try again?” Frederick asked.

Elena looked where he was looking. The carousel began to turn. It’s red and white roof gleamed in the sun.  
-  
“Excuse me?” the ticket seller asked incredulously. She even failed to pop her gum and the sat with her mouth open stupidly, the wad of pink visible on her tongue.

“I want to buy out the next five rides on the carousel,” Frederick said. Elena had her hand in his pocket. 

“You want all of them?’

“Yes,” he said. He put his hand over the fabric of his jacket pocket, feeling her twitching fingers without touching her skin. “ Yes. I want all of them.”

The ticket seller shrugged and began calculating the cost.

“What an asshole,” one of the kids remarked some time later as the whole legging and hoodie wearing crowd of them went slinking back out the entrance, unable to buy any more tickets that hour. Another agreed loudly.

Frederick watched Elena creep along the row of moving, painted horses, putting her hands on their sun warmed heads and tracing the designs on their wooden saddles. One of the kids kicked a bottle in his direction. Frederick smiled.


End file.
